In which the Bothered Owl encounters Snow, the difficulty of photographin a purse and many bibs. December 18, 2009

Alex phoned me this evening while I was getting the offspring out of the bath to tell me it was snowing. Cue very excited naked toddlers attempting to escape out of the bathroom window to go play in the snow.

The cold weather is making me slightly more excited about craft than I have been lately. It’s funny, craft is definitely a lot more fun when you’re not trying to sell what you make. I’ve been feeling a might slumpy about it of late, starting to feel slightly green around the gills whenever I look at my machine. So I took a couple of days off this week, no sewing at all, just playing with the kids and reading stories and totally immersing myself in that, ignoring the mounds of fabric piling up in corners and taking over the house. (No, really, it is taking over the entire house. It doesn’t matter how many boxes I buy to keep my yarn and fabric in. It spreads everywhere. Although I’ve yet to find any in the fridge.)

Anyway, a couple of non-crafty days have helped a little. I’ve handsewn a couple of zipper purses and pouches this week, and today I got cracking on a few sets of fabric coasters we’ve had sitting around for ages. We bought a bunch of Christmassy fabric a while back and have done nothing with it, so coasters it is. I’ll try and get them polished off tomorrow, ready for the Misty Moon Market on Saturday and Sunday.

The other thing I’ve been cracking on with this week is cataloguing all the fabric bits and pieces I’ve made and uploading lots of stuff to Folksy. All the bibs we have left are now up in the store here.

The zippered purses I’ve been working on are here and some of them are big enough that you could quite easily fit your sock knitting inside. Or use them to store your needles. They’d even make cute pencil cases if you don’t want to keep them for yourself.

And of course there’s the little button pouches which I’ve made a new batch of. They are really sweet and hold a surprising amount of stuff for something so teeny. Each one is totally unique, I try not to do the same fabric and button combos twice. Some of them have cute sheep buttons.

As always, if there’s a particular fabric or theme you’re interested in but you can’t see one ready made, why not email me? I am more than happy to send you photos of stuff from The Stash and I can make you something custom.

The one thing I found when doing the shop update is that the purses and pouches are really hard to photograph well. I am not great at photography to begin with (Alex has a much better eye for what works than me. ) and trying to get a decent photo of the interior of a teeny weeny pouch or purse is surprisingly difficult. I ended up taking some fairly wobbly photos, using my phone and car key as weights to hold the damned things open so I could get a half decent shot of the inside.

I think the answer is just to make them with the feature fabric on the outside. Stuff the sensible fabric, novelty skeletons and food stuffs all the way.

Either that or invent a reversible zipper.

Anyway, go forth and look at my wares, I am done touting them for the evening. I am off to bed to try not to dream about sewing. You may look askance, I genuinely often wake up at 2am and cannot get back to sleep because I’ve been dreaming about designing a new purse and I can’t figure out how to get the zipper in. Sad? Perhaps. I like to think of it as supreme dedication to our arts…